Synopsis: Captain Sisko, Lt. Commander Dax, Odo, and Garak are returned to the past, when Deep Space Nine was under Cardassian control.
In this episode we can see what happens when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego suppresses bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious, and what happens when they erupt into its purview through a complex.
In “Things Past” Captain Benjamin Sisko, Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax, Odo, and Elim Garak are returning to Deep Space Nine, when their runabout is exposed to something that causes them to be sent back seven years in time, to when the station was under Cardassian control. When the runabout arrives at the station her passengers are unconscious. But viewers see them being sent back to a day when Odo had been responsible for the execution of three innocent men, and Sisko, Odo, and Garak have taken their identities. Odo is forced to relive the incident and when he admits to the others his role in the event, they are revived in the present. Once back, Dr. Julian Bashir tells Odo that what they had come in contact with was something akin to the Great Link, the way in which changelings are all interconnected.
Here, what Odo experienced in being connected to something akin to the Great Link and forced to admit his past actions, can be seen as analogous to how when something about our past that the conscious ego has suppressed, in order to keep going, resurfaces as a complex. Once Odo admitted to his feelings of guilt for his acts in relation to the death of these three men, he was sent back to the present to recover. This is just how when bits of unconscious material are acknowledged by the conscious ego, healing can begin and we can become more whole.
mydailysoultrek 